SYDNEY, AUS - April 19, 2010 – Experian Hitwise® today released data that reveals Google.com.au continues to be the dominant search engine with 82.9 per cent of all searches by Australian Internet users, four weeks ending 27 March 2010.
Google implemented changes at the end of February that causes searches made through Google.com from .au domains to be automatically redirected to Google.com.au. This has resulted in a massive change in the balance of searches between the two Google domains.
Yahoo!7 Search .au is the only other search engine to experience an increase in share of searches over the past month, although this remained minimal at 2.13 per cent. Bing continues to struggle in its bid to strengthen its position in the market.
Percentage of Australian searches among leading search engine providers
Percentage of Australian searches among leading search engine providers | |||
Search Engine |
March-10 |
February-10 |
Percentage change |
www.google.com.au |
82.93% |
74.61% |
11.15% |
www.google.com |
4.42% |
12.65% |
-65.08% |
search.yahoo.com |
4.39% |
4.44% |
-1.16% |
www.bing.com |
3.92% |
4.05% |
-3.24% |
au.search.yahoo.com |
2.69% |
2.63% |
2.13% |
Note: Data is based on four-week rolling periods (ending 27 March 2010 and 27 February 2010) from the Hitwise sample of 3 million Australian Internet users. Figures are for web searches only. | |||
The below data proves s earch term length is continuing to increase as users become more specific in their searches and provide more detail as a result.
Percentage of Australian clicks by number of keywords | |||
|
4 weeks ending 27 March 2010 |
4 weeks ending 27 February 2010 |
Month over month percentage change |
1 word |
22.69% |
22.94% |
-1.1% |
2 words |
27.00% |
27.42% |
-1.5% |
3 words |
22.40% |
22.40% |
0.0% |
4 words |
13.51% |
13.38% |
1.0% |
5 words |
6.83% |
6.69% |
2.1% |
6 words |
3.43% |
3.31% |
3.6% |
7 words |
1.79% |
1.70% |
5.3% |
8+ words |
2.34% |
2.16% |
8.3% |
Note: data is based on four-week rolling periods (ending 27 March 2010 and 27 February 2010) from the Experian Hitwise sample of 3 million Australian Internet users. | |||
Search Engines continue to be the primary way Internet users navigate to key industries. Travel and Automotive were the only two industries to show an increase in upstream visits referred directly from search engines, comparing March 2010 with March 2009.
Among the top search engines Google.com.au sent the most visits to the five industries in the table below. Bing saw the greatest growth among Education (+45.5%) and Entertainment (+28.7%), whilst Yahoo!7 Search grew substantially across all five industries.
Australian Industry Upstream Share of Traffic from major Search Engines | |||||||||
|
Google.com.au |
Bing.com |
Yahoo!7 Search | ||||||
Industry |
March, 2010 |
March, 2009 |
Year-over-Year percentage change |
March, 2010 |
March, 2009 |
Year-over-Year percentage change |
March, 2010 |
March, 2009 |
Year-over-Year percentage change |
Computers and Internet |
20.38% |
18.87% |
8.0% |
0.86% |
0.72% |
18.9% |
0.37% |
0.24% |
52.7% |
Business and Finance |
25.89% |
24.50% |
5.7% |
0.94% |
0.79% |
19.3% |
0.57% |
0.39% |
44.2% |
Entertainment |
26.08% |
25.95% |
0.5% |
0.90% |
0.70% |
28.7% |
0.54% |
0.40% |
34.7% |
Education |
36.45% |
35.30% |
3.2% |
1.02% |
0.70% |
45.5% |
0.68% |
0.48% |
41.7% |
Shopping and Classifieds |
28.46% |
27.78% |
2.4% |
1.15% |
0.94% |
22.4% |
0.74% |
0.58% |
27.0% |
Note: data is based on monthly upstream traffic from the Experian Hitwise sample of 3 million Australian Internet users. | |||||||||
Please source data as Experian Hitwise.